The evening mail brought her tidings of the death of the last de Blauve boy, who had voluntarily gone to the firing-line in advance of those of his age, and had been killed outright in the very hour when he first set foot in the trench. Almost mechanically, and as a daily duty, she read two newspapers, line by line. She seemed to feel a great inward emptiness; she felt herself going to pieces. She must make a change, at whatever cost. There was just now no necessity for her presence in the hospital. She resolved to return to Paris, without other reason than the impossibility of remaining in Surville. How many feverish changes she had made, since the beginning of this war, with no more serious motive than this! XX Arrived in Paris, she went at once to see Mme. de Blauve. This woman, who had lost a much-loved husband and two sons hardly old enough to be soldiers, was not weeping, was not feeling dull, had no hard words to say about the war. She gave full evidence of tenderness toward her family, but, above all, she knew how to live, and that, in a time of war, means total forgetfulness of self and of all whom one loves. She was not sending her daughters into the hospitals, where they were not needed; she had herself given up her work as nurse, in order to give special attention to preparing them for marriage. "Marriage is the civic duty of women," she said; "at sixteen and a half one can very well have a child. Marriage is a difficult matter in a time like this, but I am willing to pay the price!" She was thinking only of this, the oldest girl having passed her fifteenth year. To Odette, Mme. de Blauve was another Mme. de Calouas in Paris. She felt at ease with neither of them, and yet both of them attracted her inexplicably. She felt herself at a distance from them while yet being influenced by them, to a degree that surprised some indefinable part of herself. Both of them shocked her, wounded her, even; she was appalled before their stoicism. She looked at them darkly, almost malevolently, when they seemed to gaze with reprobation upon the mourning garments which she persisted in wearing. These women, brought up to worship the dead, uprose like spectres from the depths of the past which was their element, and uttered a word unfamiliar to their lips: "Forward!" The impression was most disturbing. Not that she envied them, under the pretext that both appeared to have adjusted themselves to the sorrows of the time. Odette had no desire thus to adjust herself. On the contrary, she implored to be left alone, to bury herself in unending grief. And yet she felt a secret sympathy with these unavowed foes of the perpetuation of her love. XXI